Pot Goes Mainstream on NBC’s Today Show (VIDEO)
Marie Claire editor-in-chief Joanna Coles, and Dr. Julie Holland, a psychiatrist at the New York City School of Medicine, on the NBC Today Show
Tim King Salem-News.com
Studies indicate that 8 million American women smoked marijuana in the last year.
(LOS ANGELES) – It was interesting to watch Matt Lauer have to be “cool” about marijuana in this week’s NBC Today Show segment titled “Stiletto Stoners”, which related a story of growing numbers of women who prefer pot as a wind down drug, that they see as far less harmful than alcohol or other substances.
Marie Claire editor-in-chief Joanna Coles, is one of many modern professional women who disagree with the somewhat common belief, that there is a large social stigma attached to smoking marijuana.
“I have to say, that’s not what we are hearing from readers, she said on the Today Show. First of all, it’s decriminalized in 13 states, and I don’t think this is a generation of people who get excited about the fact that it’s illegal.”
Coles says the inspiration for the article came from readers who said that they were feeling stressed.
“Clearly, the economy is a great deal of stress for people and they wanted a way to unwind. And they found more and more of them were doing this [smoking marijuana] and they found it had less impact on them when they were going to work the next morning. So they didn’t want to drink. It’s cheap and they felt they could do it in the privacy of their own home, and it was a very effective way to calm down,” Coles said.
Also appearing on the program, Dr. Julie Holland, a psychiatrist at the New York City School of Medicine, agreed that marijuana may be a less harmful drug than alcohol, saying that marijuana has psycho-therapeutic properties that booze lacks.
“It’s more of a mind drug”, she said. “Alcohol’s sort of a deadening, numbing maybe more like a body drug.”
“On pot, people are unwinding and they’re relaxing, but they’re also able to think and maybe analyze or think clearly, I think cannabis is more functional than alcohol, certainly in terms of anxiety. It can be a treatment or a medicine.”
Coles added that the Marie Claire article seems to have struck a nerve with readers.
Special thanks to Cheryl Shuman from the Beverly Hills Chapter of NORML.
http://www.salem-news.com/articles/october022009/stiletto_stoners_tk_10-2-09.php